18 Aug 2023 – Days 11-15
Mon: Day11 drove to Northcape with a lighthouse on this misty morning – https://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=930
Interesting WindEnergyInterpretiveCentre,VisitorCentre&GiftShop
There is even a NorwayWindFarm, but did not go!
Low tide here is the longest natural rock reef in NAmerica where the seals were sunbathing today.
Pleasant ~3+k/1+m walk on the BlackMarshNatureTrail
Yummy seafood pasta lunch@FamilyTraditionRestaurant/Tignish
St.Simon&St.Jude RomanCatholicChurch(1860)-nice to be a tourist
https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=1642
Nancy: PEI – Day 11 – August 14 – My first day off of hiking! We visited the North Cape where a wind research center is located, a lighthouse, and a beautiful short trail. This is the northernmost point and we were able to observe the sea rolling in from 2 different directions. I’m not sure you can see it in the video but I’ve attached it anyway. The museum offered much information on the island history, including native tribe, wind turbines, and the effects of global warming. Some of the earliest Irish settlers, pre-potato famine, included McGraths- my husband’s mother was a McGrath and her parents immigrated to Canada from Ireland but I’m not sure where. We also visited a beautiful Catholic Church with an Irish Celtic Cross on the lawn. We ate a delicious lunch at a local family restaurant and picked up veggies for dinner – again prepared by Lori and Glenda. Weather was cloudy but only a few raindrops throughout the day.
Karen: Fun day off the trail on the North Cape learning more about large wind turbines & Canadas environmentalism efforts, saw & heard seals from a distance, great lunch & visited a Celtic Catholic Church & gardens
Tue: Day12 ~13k/9m, 5+hrs walk from Alma-Tignish(CT). Pleasant walk passing a fir tree ready for Christmas! FluorescenceCaterpillar(first for me) and the site of 1932Train-wreck.
Excellent concert with amazing acoustic @St.Simon&St.Jude RomanCatholicChurch/Tignish by Soprano RobynPerry&Organist LeoMarchildon. https://www.pressreader.com/canada/journal-epioneer/20170722/281530816082753
Ending this wonderful day with one of the best soft-ice-cream tasted.
Nancy: PEI – Day 12 – August 15 – Back on the trail again, but this time not the island walk but the Confederation Trail instead. 9.3 miles, 8 picnic tables, 6 benches, at least 7 bikers, 3 walkers, and nice trail. A few too many mosquitoes but today we all brought headnets and it was cool enough that I could keep myself covered with long sleeves and long pants. In fact, nights are getting very cool. I had to ask my husband Joe to send me some warm clothes. (Bad planning on my part). We had a few interesting sights and listened to a lot of tunes while walking. We met one lady who had biked the tip to tip trail in 9 Saturdays with a group in 2002. After meeting up with our friends, we visited a grocery and another vegetable stand to pick up items for dinner in our cabin. Tonight’s menu included squash and onions, beets, hot dogs/sausages, tomatoes, cucumbers, and leftover carrots, succotash, potatoes, and olives. Plenty filling. We finished early enough today that we had energy to attend a concert at the church we visited yesterday. A very talented organist/composer and a local soprano, Robin Perry, who has won many awards, performed. They were both excellent and the acoustics in the church were amazing. The pipe organ emits beautiful notes. (I attached a couple of very short videos of the performers). Our last stop was for ice cream. We have arranged for a shuttle tomorrow so that we can all hike together. It will be our last day as a group as Glenda and Lori are returning home on Thursday. (Sad). Only three will remain to complete the tip to tip walk. The overwhelming mosquitoes have resulted in us canceling our plans to camp and we have booked a motel for 2 nights and a funky house for 6 nights in between our other accommodations.
Wed: Day13 ~17+k/11+m, ~6+hrs walk from Piusville-Alma on the ConfederationTrail including rest stops, lunch&rescue work!! Another beautiful day hike where we could all 5 hike together. Glenda&Lori will be flying back to the US tomorrow and they will be missed.
Another good dinner@NorthportPierRestaurant/Alberton.
Nancy: August 16 – 9.5 miles or 11 miles if you count detours. Nice weather day. Loving the Confederation Trail. Since it is a rail trail it goes into towns and we pass good eating spots. I had the best one egg breakfast with bacon and fresh baked and buttered bread. As Amy summarized-11 miles, 6 hours, rest stops, lunch breaks, 4 picnic tables and 10 benches, and rescue work – a great day! Lots of open views as well as canopied trail. We passed some huge agricultural operations. We arranged for a pricey shuttle today so that we could all hike together on our last day with the full group. That made the day especially fun.
Karen: Today 17+k/11.3 miles & yesterday 13k/9 miles + with 2 beautiful days on The Confederate Trail. Another great veggie dinner followed by a soprano vocalist & organ performance last night. Assisted a woman from Nova Scotia on the trail today who suspected her boyfriend had a heat stroke while cycling. Gives me an opportunity to remind everyone of the importance of hydration when outdoors and/or exercising – please don’t take this lightly.
Thu: Day14 a misty day to start zeroK/zeroM on the trail, but ~2hrs driving Glenda&Lori@the airport. Turned out to be a beautiful&productive morning with errands&shopping in Charlottetown.
First time visiting an informative&interesting Canadian PotatoMuseum+AntiqueFarmMachineryMuseum/O’Leary. https://canadianpotatomuseum.com/
Yummy ice-cream who were just packing up to leave, but was fortunate to get 2 rich chocolate-scopes, good&valid excuse to start with dessert-hahaha! Delicious lobster on baked potato lunch+the best natural potato chips tasted.
Delightful&entertaining evening of Ceilidh(PEI social gathering highlighting traditional music)@StMarks.
4generations of talents@Burton(pop of 50! including the twin sisters who are 82, born&bred here and have never left the island. Lovely star gazing to end this day, hoping&praying for NO rains tomorrow despite of the forecast!
Nancy: August 17-rest day. Sadly, we dropped off 2 friends at the airport, so we are now three. We then proceeded to Sam’s Diner for a sit down breakfast then back on to the road (2 hour drive back to where we are staying). On the way, we stopped at the Canadian Potato Museum. I am so full of potato facts that I can hardly think. Expect a few tidbits every day. At the museum, I discovered a flyer for music at a local church hall. No one knew for sure what type of music, maybe country, but we went anyway – just to experience local color. Wow! Were we impressed. It started with two guys singing Irish tunes and Credence Clearwater Revival, one playing a guitar and the other playing a mandolin. Then, they brought up their children – a son playing fiddle and a daughter step dancing. What fun! At the intermission, we were treated to lunch- homemade sandwiches and snacks brought in from a local community-Campbellton. I asked for a restroom and was sent through a door with the sign overhead (4U2P). Haha. The second act included many favorites sung by 4 generations of a very talented family- the grandfather, then the mother, the son, and the granddaughter and then all of the kids. A delightful evening including many beloved songs (If I Needed You, Coat of Many Colors, Silver Threads and Golden Needles, Have You Ever Seen the Rain, and many more. ). Country Roads was the finale with all of the two families singing.
Potato fact: The Aymara Indians, who live near Titicara high in the Andes, have been cultivating potatoes for more than 5000 years. HERE, according to legend, the Sun
God created the first Incas. Potatoes were a vital part of Inca diet and culture and, by the time of the Spanish conquest in 1532, the Incas had terraced vast mountainside areas for the production of maize and potatoes. POTATOES of all shapes, sizes
and colours are still grown in the Peruvian Andes, their varieties numbering in the thousands. The language of the Quechua Indians has at least 1000 words for potatoes, including names such as “scab face” for potatoes with red skin and white spots, and “black ostrich-mother” to describe black-skinned potatoes shaped like ostrich eggs. In Canada, 80 percent of the potatoes harvested come from only six of these thousands of varieties.
A few more notes about last nights concert. The gathering was called a “Ceilidh” a fun evening of traditional Island entertainment (from the flyer) or one lady translated it as “Irish kitchen party”. The audience was questioned about where they were from, naming all of the Canadian provinces. US was mentioned last and we, of course, said we were from Virginia. Karen then piped up and said Amy was from Singapore. One of the guys came back with “We singa and we are poor”. Cute. We had a nice conversation with the lady next to us and then we met two 82 year old twins who have lived on the Island all of their life. They were quite awed when Amy asked to take their picture
Karen: Dropped our friends Lizard & Hi Hills at airport in Charlottetown as they had to depart after 2 fun weeks together. We will miss them for sure.Toured the Canadian potato museum & enjoyed the cafe w potato products & then an evening Irish themed music featuring 4 generations of one family. Brian Benham just recently commented that this is an eclectic trip & he is absolutely correct
Fri: Day15 ~12+k/8m ~4+hrs walk from Piusville-O’Leary in light rains&drizzles with some local inhabitance but too many mosquitoes! 2nd solar-composting-toilet on this path. Thank goodness for a shorter day as the rains started when we were done. Laundry&packing as we will be leaving this area tomorrow.
Edited: tkx to David Jenkins for this info: Nests of Fall Webworms (Hyphantria cunea) along roadsides and forest edges. Each nest houses caterpillars that hatched from an egg mass laid by a Fall Webworm Moth. The caterpillars build their nest at the tips of tree branches and consume leaves within the nest. Fall Webworms feed on a wide range of hardwood trees and, despite their abundance, rarely cause more than cosmetic damage. They’re native to the United States and southern Canada. Good to know that they do not cause any harm to the trees.
Nancy: PEI – Day 15 – August 18 – Piusville to O’Leary – 8 miles. Connecting the dots. We have finished the North Cape and have, over the last couple of weeks, hiked all the way to Kensington on the Confederation Trail or 123 km (76.4 miles), but we’ve also walked considerable Island Walk miles. We had intermittent rain all day. The highlight of the day was a composting toilet that was mosquito free. Some pretty views, 5 picnic tables, 10 benches, 2 bridges over creeks, 2 bikers, and zero walkers. We thought we were doing 15 km but it only turned out to be 8 miles. The km markers aren’t at road crossings so it’s hard to estimate how many you are going to pass. I finished before the others so I kept walking down the road and found someone about to get in his car and asked if I could sit on his porch until my friends arrived. He agreed and even swept away the cobwebs for me. The folks on the Island have been exceptionally nice and welcoming. We picked up dinner at the local Kwik Mart and headed back to our cottage to pack up for our move tomorrow. We will have tight quarters in one motel room for the next 3 nights.
Potato facts:
LURED BY TALES of realms of gold and
silver and sustained by a sense of divine mission, the Spanish conquistadors of the 16th century crossed the western seas to seize riches and convert the heathen.
However, history has demonstrated that the real treasure that the Spaniards appropriated from South America was the lowly potato. It has benefited the human race more than all the gold and silver pillaged from the Inca people.
IN 1532, Francisco Pizarro swiftly subdued the Peruvian Incas and conquered the richest domain known to Europeans at that time. The Spaniards merciless greed for gold puzzled the native people who wondered if the Europeans ate it! The Incas used precious metals for sacred obiects and ritual purposes only; in a self-sufficient society, they had no coinage and no need to buy anything. To them, the potato was far more valuable than gold and silver. It was both the staple food of their great civilization and mystical spirit, it was a deity to be worshipped.
TO ThE SPANIARDS, the greatest single asset in South America was a mountain of silver in the Andean hills of Peru at Potosi. To feed the native slaves working in the mines, the Spaniards confiscated the Incas’ store of chuno, or freeze-dried potato, and forced the Incas to produce even more. Many Spaniards returned home rich men by dealing in chuno alone.
FROM ANCIENT TIMES, South
American Indians have produced dehydrated potatoes called chuno.
Potato tubers are spread on the ground to freeze overnight and then to thaw in the morning sun. The natives tread on the potatoes to squeeze the water out of cells that have been ruptured by freezing.
When dry, they become chuno. This freeze-dried potato will keep for months or almost indefinitelv if ground into meal. During the Incan empire, the surplus chuno was stored for use in time of famine or war.
Karen: A shorter hike today @ 13k/8 miles with many mosquitoes & intermittent rain
To be edited and updated when energy permits…
Being back here has its advantages that places&things are familiar, but always something new to discover, this time round a SugarCaneFreshJuice machine/FortuneCentre. Not only can I now get fresh OJ, now also this without having to deal or talk to anyone. Tkx to a dear nephew 
Tue: welcome Chuan, nice to catch up and looking forward to the next 2days in his company, tkx for one of the best(to my taste)PineappleTarts. Has been~5yrs ago since we last met. 
Sad news to hear that one of our AT-Fellow-Hikers ChrisWidmer(Sawbuck)’s passing. A perfect gentleman who gave us much support during our 2005AT-Thru’Hike and my trailname TigerLily. when we were having a resting by some TigerLily patch and I told him+another young hiker what TigerLily show is about in Thailand! Condolences with prayers&thoughts to Blossom&his family – he will be missed.
